


we are all the same

by storypaint (possibilityleft)



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/pseuds/storypaint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel has never quite felt comfortable in her skin.  <em>Some days when she is alone in the house, she morphs into Jake and sits in her room.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	we are all the same

The Animorphs didn't like morphing people. Even if it was just borrowing DNA, it felt wrong. Rachel always feels a touch of revulsion when she does it, more so than she does morphing gross or difficult creatures.

She can't explain it to anyone, then, why she found it necessary to acquire Jake. He doesn't even know, attributing the sudden tired calm as true weariness; her hand on his shoulder as a familial comfort. Acquiring him had made her feel guilty, repulsed.

But wearing his body was like an epiphany. Something about it felt so _right_ , like this was the piece of the puzzle she'd been missing for... for her whole life.

Some days when she is alone in the house, she morphs into Jake and sits in her room, examining the heady feeling of _rightness_ , of _maleness_. The new weight in her pants is not an invasion-- it's a present. It's a gift.

*

She's never heard of transgender. The word tomboy is a much less threatening word, and it's the one all her teachers use when she is in elementary school. She doesn't talk to the girls. She fights with the boys, little playground scuffles about her pigtails, but it's easy back then to be one of them. She even uses the boys' restroom a few times before the teacher scolds her.

_Just a phase. Tomboy. She'll grow out of it. Needs more female friends._

Rachel's heard all of them, but none of them quite fit.

*

She's not stupid; she knows how to survive, whether she's fighting Yeerks or fitting in with her peers. She starts buying Cosmo, wearing nail polish, playing the game.

It's just a game to her, but no one sees that. Rachel has always been competitive. She wants to win the game.

She tries to explain it to Cassie, Cassie who is all coffee skin and overalls and utterly, utterly female somehow without trying. Cassie laughs.

"Just be yourself," she counsels. "You shouldn't work so hard to be girly."

Rachel laughs in a halting manner and offers to paint Cassie's fingernails, Jamaica Red bright over the dirt under her nails. She could do it _perfectly_ , like a real manicure.

Cassie declines.

*

Rachel is careful about the time in morph. She never spends more than an hour and a half as Jake, with the bedroom door locked tight. She thinks about masturbating once, to see if it feels different, but this is _Jake_ and she can't bear to do it in the end.

She likes Tobias. That makes her a girl, she thinks. She knows about gays but she isn't gay. She's a girl. She reads Cosmo.

She dies as a male polar bear, full of might and anger and duty and courage. The Ellimist reads her, he understands, he knows (shouldn't interfere, can't bear not to: this is the definition of a god).

When Rachel is born into the next life, his name is Ryan, and it's one of the few interventions the Ellimist never regrets.

**Author's Note:**

> Yuletide 2008 stocking stuffer for soda_in_capes, who wanted to see a trans Animorphs character.


End file.
